With the rise of print-on-demand and product personalization, customers are always looking for new ways to make their purchases more unique.

What started as simple text customization has evolved into sophisticated designs featuring images, monograms, and clipart. But as trends shift, businesses need to keep up with fresh ideas to stand out in a competitive market.

One of the hottest trends right now? Personalized products featuring maps and locations.

By offering location-based customization, you can expand your product range and give customers a meaningful way to capture special places—whether it’s where they met, got engaged, or grew up.

💡 Want to start selling custom map products? Learn how to integrate this feature into your store with Customily and stay ahead of the competition!

But first things first, what kind of products can I personalize with maps? The answer could be ANYTHING but you do have to consider that maps have a lot of details and tiny lines, so choosing a product that needs a complex fulfillment technology is not recommended (for example, an engraved or laser-cut product!).

The best idea is to stick to the basics and choose something that we know will work and look great: printed products. Printed products include, of course, a big range of products, so let's think about a product where the map itself can be the star of the show. Because, why would you mind personalizing a map if it doesn't show properly, right?

But I bet you already know where I'm going with this: the most popular (and easier!) products to personalize with maps and locations are, of course, canvas and posters.

❗ TIP! If you're on square one and your business is just starting, working with a print-on-demand provider is a great idea. They manage stocks and shipping, so you would only have to worry about launching your online store and creating astonishing designs. And of course, most POD suppliers have beautiful canvas options. You can learn more about them and how to launch your own store here.

Now that you have your product, let's see some beautiful design ideas of how to personalize a canvas or a poster using maps!

Classic customizable maps

The option that is a must for any store is the classic 1-map canvas, where your customers can choose any location from the globe and have it printed. You could offer different shape options for this, for example, a rectangle-shaped or a circled-shaped map. You can also play with different map styles and background colors. Or you could give your customers the option to add a border to the design if they want and choose its color too.

Romantic customizable maps

This is a best seller and another must for your store! Think of birthday gifts, engagements, weddings, anniversaries, Valentine's Day, and Christmas... there are too many occasions when this kind of product would make a perfect gift, so you definitely need a couple of options to cover them.

I selected 2 adorable options for this romantic customizable canvas, but you can combine them with the ones I suggested before to create a wider range of products!

If you do a bit of research online you'll see that "where we met - where we got engaged - where we married " is one of the most popular options, but you could also have for example "where we met - our first home - our first child" or whatever you want!

Think of some options out of the box to impress your customers!

Travel customizable maps

Another cool option that you can find in many stores is one that let customers add a considerable amount of locations (usually 5 or more!) under a nice pre-defined design, which makes an ideal gift for people or families that travel a lot and want to keep a memorable poster from their vacations! Check these examples with six or eight map options, don't they look awesome?

Family customizable maps

Last but not least, another super popular option is map canvas for families. This would make an excellent gift to sell on special occasions like Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas, or any birthday! Again, as with the options we showed before, you can always play with different map styles, backgrounds, borders, and more.

Check these 2 ideas to create lovely map posters for any family: an option with a house-shaped map with the address above (an ideal gift for couples that just moved together!) or an option with a heart-shaped puzzle of different maps for all the members of a family (an ideal gift for families that live apart!).

Before moving on, let me add a little note on this: we chose canvas and poster examples because as I mentioned, they are the most popular and easier products to personalize with maps, but if you already sell those and want to go a step further you can try any of those designs on other products! Some great options could be coasters, keychains, ornaments, magnets, or mugs!

Create a Product Page That Sells

Now that you have your product idea and a variety of design options, it's time to bring it to life! Start by setting up an online store using an e-commerce platform like Shopify or WooCommerce.

To attract customers, your product page should feature high-quality images—ideally, placed in real-life settings so shoppers can better visualize the product’s size and details.

Next, add customization fields where buyers can input the necessary details for their design. For example:

📍 Location coordinates

🏙️ City or landmark name

📅 Special dates

📝 Personalized text (names, messages, etc.)

Processing & Fulfilling Orders

Once a customer places an order, you'll need to manually create the personalized design and send it to your supplier for production and shipping. As your business grows, consider using automation tools like Customily to streamline the process and save time!

🚀 Ready to start selling? Set up your store today and bring your personalized products to life!

But what if you could enhance your customer's shopping experience by letting them personalize their canvas while seeing a live preview of it? 🤯

You can trust a robust product personalizer like Customily to do this, which not only will allow you to add live customization to your maps but also has unlimited personalization options to customize any kind of product! So you don't have to stick just to maps and can widen your offer to any product that you want, with personalization options like monograms, images, or clipart.

With Customily your customers will be able to personalize their canvas while seeing a live preview of what they are creating, and you can also offer them different map styles so they can play and choose the style that best fits their purpose.

If you're not convinced yet of why selling personalized map canvas with a product personalizer like Customily is a great idea, check out this demo product and try it by yourself! Look at some of the different map designs you could have in your store! 🤩

And just so you know, if you use a solution like Customily, once your client places the order you will receive the ready-to-print file for fulfillment. So you just need to grab that file and print your product, or automatically send it to your POD provider. No more manual work is needed, you can set your store on autopilot and watch as your sales grow 😊

You can try Customily for free on Shopify and Etsy. You will have access to a 9-day free trial so you can learn the basics and see the true potential of product customization.

I hope you liked this guide on how to sell products with maps and start selling your own in your online store soon! If you have more design ideas and want to share them in the comments below feel free to do so! 💫

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